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Originally published in Germany in 1901. Buddenbrooks is Thomas Mann's first major novel, and one of the two for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Buddenbrooks tells the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. With consummate skill, Mann draws a rounded picture of middle class life... more »: births and christenings, marriages, divorces and deaths, successes and failures. These commonplace occurrences, intrinsically the same, vary slightly as they recure in each succeeding generations. And as the Buddenbrook familly eventually succumbs to modern influences- influences which are at variance with their own traditions-its downall becomes certain.« less